Week 2

Last week was our second week of school, and we stayed on schedule…for the most part.  Here’s the rundown of what we did.

Circle Time – In the morning we start off our school day by learning about the calendar.  I go over the month, day and year, and then we all say the days of the week together.  E is so cute doing this.  He just makes a weird sound at the beginning of each word and then ends it with day.  We are going to move onto learning the months after next week, since K seems to have the days down.  We then talk about the weather, which was a little more interesting last week since we actually had something other than sunny.  We are also learning a new song every week, and we listened to the song a few times each day.  I would say what the song was, but I cannot remember right now and I don’t want to go upstairs to look. :)

Math – K is doing fine with Singapore, but I feel like I’m struggling with it a little bit.  I am just not used to the style, I suppose.  It is very different from Abeka and the various curriculums I came across in college.  We finished up Unit 11 about less and more, and started Unit 12 which is on numbers 10 – 20.  K already knows all of her numbers to 100, so this is just review.  I do really like the way they present the teen numbers, breaking it down to 10 and 4 makes 14, etc.  Hopefully, this style of teaching will become easier for me. :)

Language Arts – We took a break from our reading curriculum, and just read BOB books and Hooked on Phonics readers.  K did really well, and she is starting to really enjoy reading.  One afternoon last week, she even went upstairs and started reading some of her readers on her own.   We continued working on Explode the Code 1, doing about one page per day.  For handwriting, K did the upper and lowercase U pages in the Zaner-Bloser K book.   

Geography – Kenya was our country last week.  We learned about the Great Rift Valley, and the source of the Nile.  We read a book called Planting the Trees of Kenya that we really enjoyed.  It was about a woman who came to the US for college, and when she went back to Kenya five years later found the land being destroyed by the tearing down of trees.  She took it upon herself to start replanting Kenya and educating her people on why they need trees and how to grow and care for them. 

Science – Week 2 of Sonlight Science K was all about weather.  The first day was on rainbows, so K loved that.  The next few days covered the water cycle, and different types of clouds and storms.  It worked out well, since we had a cloudy and stormy week.

Theme – Our theme was Summer last week, and we actually had some nice weather.  The kids were able to go outside a few times and do some summery things like go to the park and ride their bikes.  Here is a link to the post I wrote about the art project we did…Summer.

Read Alouds – We continued reading from the Sonlight P3/4 and P4/5 lists.  Every week for awhile, that will include a story from A First Book of Fairy Tales, The Tall Book of Nursery Tales, Stories from Around the World, and The Lion Storyteller Bedtime Book.  Also, everyday we read a page or two from Mother Goose and A Child’s Book of Poems.